Turistas

It seemed like most of the advertising for this movie billed it as a torture fest along the line of Hostel and Saw. But while Turistas does contain its share of violence, there’s really only one scene that’s comparable to those films. The rest of it manages to stand on it’s own as a tense, solid thriller.

The movie follows vacationing Americans traveling through Brazil by bus, who happen to meet a couple other tourists on holiday. After the bus breaks down, the group finds themselves stranded at a secluded beach. Rather than wait aimlessly for the next bus to come along, they decide to stay awhile and get on with partying and drinking themselves into unconsciousness.

But the next morning they discover that they were drugged, and robbed while asleep. A local they befriended earlier named Kiko appears, and seems to want to help them. He leads the wayward vacationers to a remote house that he claims is owned by his uncle.

Of course, this movie is a horror-thriller. And if the uncle was as altruistic as Kiko claimed, there wouldn’t be much of a story here.

The “uncle” turns out to be a psychotic medical doctor who shows up at the house with a group of thugs, takes the vacationers prisoner, and plans to harvest their organs for sale on the black market. Some of the vacationers go under the knife, some are killed off, and a few manage to make a break for it. From there, the story leads to a chase through an underwater cave and some of the most tense, memorable scenes in the story.

Turistas may not bring much in the way of originality, but it does hit all the right story beats, and manages to be entertaining. A torture-horror flick that’s light on the torture, but heavy on the suspense.

- Nate